I drew my weapon and shot out the lamp on his desk, swearing that his next question would draw my aim to a spot between his eyebrows.
He stared at me, speechless. He opened his drawer and pulled out a magnifying glass. He brought the document to the tip of his nose to study the signature. There was no question about it, it was Bera’s signature. He observed that he’d never expected that the Governor’s dislike of his Captain of the Guard would’ve reached the point of sending him to a certain death.
“… The air will suck you dry, your skin will split open, your body will be covered by lesions.”
“Everything has been foreseen. We’ll be exposed to the desert for exactly sixteen hours, not a second more.”
“Drake, are you out of your mind? Are you going to dump the salt in the middle of nowhere?”
“Corresponding transportation has been arranged. Someone will pick up the cargo.”
“Someone?!”
I stuck the barrel into his mouth. The General Manager was enunciating all the objections that were plaguing my mind and I didn’t fancy anyone reminding me. He drew back and spat. He said that he wasn’t sorry that he wouldn’t see me again because there was no way that I was coming back alive, but that he was devastated that he’d lose three hundred cyclists and fifty berlingas. He asked me to get the hell out of his office since he’d just been given the task of choosing which three hundred to sentence to death and he needed to spend some time confessing to his spiritual healer.
The Storage and Loading Manager was in the toilet when I showed up. I waited outside the door, unholstered my pistol and rested it against my shoulder. I was a wreck and didn’t have the strength to provide any explanations. He’d either obey without comment or I’d plant a bullet in his leg. He came out, wiping his hands, and looked at me with surprise. He must’ve read my expression correctly because he’s as wily as a fox. I handed his directive over and then showed him my own. He read them both, looked at my pistol again, walked to his office, lifted a bottle of whisky and downed half of it before sitting down.
“Two hundred dockers,” he whispered.
“At three in the morning ready at the Saltworks warehouses.”
He put the bottle to his lips again and drained it in large, greedy gulps. He took a deep breath.
“And this will be repeated every day?”
“Yes, starting tomorrow.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Bera’s stark raving mad.”
He ransacked his cabinets but failed to come up with another bottle. He whimpered that there’d be chaos down at the docks; he’d have to cancel rest days, demand overtime, change shifts – how the hell could they take such decisions without consulting him? I asked him to commit himself for the two hundred. He grudgingly declared that he’d obey the Governor but told me to relay to him that he insisted on a meeting, and damn soon at that. I promised that I’d relay his demand and slammed the door behind me. As I was striding down the corridor, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and hurriedly stuffed the gun back in its holster. I couldn’t say I liked the look of me at all.
I’d left the General Manager of the Saltworks for last because I disliked him more than the others – and the feeling was mutual. Flabby, jaundiced, arrogant, he suffered from all kinds of ailments due to the chemicals they used in the works to preserve the salt’s properties. You could never tell whether what he said was what he truly believed. He immediately took the wind out of my sails as soon as I walked into his office by whipping the papers out of my hand. Noxious though he is, he’s possessed of a sixth sense. Clutching the documents, his eyes remained on my face, getting more information from it than the written material could have given him. He was silent for a few minutes, as if testing whether my nerves could take it.
Finally, his voice underlining each word separately, he asked, “Who signed these directives?”
“Who do you think signed them!” I growled menacingly.
He removed his glasses and calmly began to wipe them.
“My villa is directly opposite the Palace and for the third day running, Bera’s windows haven’t been opened. I haven’t seen him for three days. And, come to think about it, the only people I’ve seen going in and out have been you six – the gang of six.”
The last phrase had been pronounced so venomously and was so laced with insinuations that I felt tears coming to my eyes, and I haven’t cried since infancy. My vexation was not due to the arrogant executive, who must’ve been far more troubled than he liked to let on, but to the Governor who was methodically demolishing our public image and exposing us to gossip, suspicions and whispers, while stripping us of any arguments for our defence. I refrained from speaking and breathed deeply, controlling my throat and face to prevent my emotions becoming obvious.
The General Manager finished wiping his glasses and put them on. He picked up the documents, leant forward in his chair and looked at me.
“From what I read here, you’ll use the pistol if I refuse, so there’s no question of my disobedience. I won’t even bother listing the consequences that these directives will have on the running of the Saltworks because you lack the scientific background to comprehend them. As from today, one-third of the daily production won’t be forwarded to the port but stored in the rear warehouses instead. Anything else I can do for you?”
The heavy sarcasm in his voice stung me like a whip and the innocuous wording of that last question didn’t escape me either. He didn’t ask whether the Governor required anything further but whether we did. I stated that the Governor didn’t require anything beyond what was in those documents. He retorted that there was no reason for me to raise my voice and could I refrain from slamming the door on my way out. I left seething, and my desire to use my pistol was overwhelming.
The day seemed to flash by since I was totally caught up in my preparations. I chose the guards who would accompany the caravan and organised the transportation of the equipment and the provisions to the warehouses. At three in the morning fifty berlingas and two hundred loaders showed up. The cyclists busied themselves by applying extra grease on the springs to withstand the heat, oiling their cycle chains and fixing the rings to the sides of their wagons so that wire could be threaded through them to connect the berlingas together. The loaders spat into their palms and asked me for the loading plan. What loading plan? I desperately searched through my papers but didn’t find one. The directives were blank about how we were to distribute the loads. I threw them aside in horror. I had to come up with a sensible plan. I distributed the salt evenly among forty-five berlingas. Three were dedicated to carrying the planks; one would carry the food, tools and ammunition; and the last, the water. This proved to be the heaviest and most unwieldy vehicle.
We set off at once and passed through the cobbled streets in formation. Every now and then, windows would fly open and astonished heads would stick out. Seeing the guards who escorted the convoy disconcerted the colonists, who thought they were witnessing a mobilisation. We reached the northern outpost an hour before sun-up. This was where cobbles gave way to sand.
The giant coils of wire along with the heavy poles and pulleys had already arrived at the outpost. We threaded the wire through the rings and tied it securely to the lead berlinga. We tested the coils to make sure that they spun without hindrance so that the wire would uncoil smoothly as we advanced. I instructed the outpost guards to continuously keep their eyes on the wire and to test it often to make sure it stayed taut. If they could feel resistance it’d mean that we were still at the other end. The wire was all that would connect us to the Colony.
The guards unloaded some planks and laid them in parallel on the sand so that our wheels would turn on them. As the last berlinga passed, the guards would remove the planks and run to lay them in front of the caravan so that we could continue forward. We all tied ourselves with ropes so that we couldn’t wander off if we were hit by a sandstorm. Before I gave the order to start, I prayed to Allah – whom I insult ever
y time I attend the Metropolis and so has every right to ignore me – to bring us back alive.
Our advance was very irregular and I was immediately worried that we wouldn’t be able to keep up the speed specified by the directives. The wheels of the berlingas lurched off the planks when the guards didn’t connect them properly or were tardy in laying them. The berlinga would then sink into the sand and we’d have to unload it before digging it out. Guards’ fingers sometimes got mangled when they hadn’t been retracted in time before approaching berlingas. On top of that, the guards would sometimes get caught up in our connecting ropes and would drop a plank or miss their cue. I kept looking at my watch, since under no circumstances could we exceed sixteen hours.
The sun rose quickly and became unbearable even faster. The dunes were taking on a pinkish hue, which meant that we were getting nearer the dangerous craters. I looked behind me and saw the Colony disappearing on the horizon. What had we let ourselves in for? Where in heaven’s name were we going? Couldn’t this thin wire that connected us to life be easily severed by a Mamelukian knife? I kept barking out orders so that everyone would be too busy to think.
We crossed traces of the dry bed of the erstwhile River Jordan and also stumbled across a few skeletons, possibly Mamelukes or unfortunates that had wandered in the fog. We shied away in revulsion, covering our faces with scarves because the fear of leprosy was ingrained in us, even though the most probable cause of their death was nothing more contagious than thirst. I could rarely tear my eyes away from the wire, which, after the last wagon, would slump downwards and get swallowed in the sand. I considered that an advantage since it would be hidden from Mamelukes but alarming in that our tracks so easily disappeared. We were a column of puny ants in the boundless desert and we didn’t even leave visible tracks. The silence of the desert was unnerving but the total lack of any life around us was horrifying.
The sun climbed up towards the vertical and fried us. No one could speak, strangled by the dry heat. Every ten minutes we drank sips of water out of our canteens and immediately wrapped our scarves back around our mouth and nose to keep the moisture in and the pink fumes out. The temperature was above fifty degrees and that of the sand and rocks over seventy. Whenever a berlinga’s wheel touched the sand you could see it steam. I felt that the soles of my boots were slowly melting.
We trudged over a multitude of buried civilisations, all traces of which had been obliterated by the Overflow. Only those glimpses of the riverbed of the Jordan remained of the past, that is, if the map was accurate and my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Suddenly, the ground became rougher as what might’ve been the crest of a mountain reared out of the sand. It became dreadfully uneven and the planks see-sawed dizzily, no matter how they were placed. The jolts from the bumps were such that some cyclists bit down on their own lips. A berlinga lurched out of control and tipped over. It was our appalling luck that it was the one carrying the water. The crates broke open and water spilled and evaporated in seconds. Not even the memory of the water remained on the stones which stared at us dry and still thirsty. We opened the berlinga’s rings to free the wire and avoid the possibility of a chain reaction of tipped wagons. The six cyclists who’d been spilled onto the rocks rubbed their aching limbs as the rest of us struggled to right the berlinga. A quick calculation showed that we were about halfway and without water we wouldn’t last forty minutes. We could neither go forward nor turn back. My head swam.
Panic ripped through the convoy and faces paled under their sunburn. Then, the oppressive desert silence descended like a shroud. I slowly pulled the scarf from my mouth and said the only thing that someone who fears death as much as I and knows that there’s no chance of survival could say. “Okay, we carry on! You can drink one sip of water from your canteens every hour from now on.”
No one moved. We couldn’t survive on one sip per hour. I could hear laboured breathing and could see fiery eyes around me focusing on the person that had brought them here. They were filled with a mixture of anger and desperation. This is the end for me, I thought. I’ll die here in the middle of the desert having just given an order that no one obeyed, leading a caravan of salt to nowhere, on the command of some lunatic. Here lies the thief Bercant who thought that he’d survived the Overflow. I shouted louder, “I said get going! You can have a sip of water every hour!”
“Every half,” said the gaggle of bruised cyclists of the upturned berlinga.
The fact that the cyclists had a human voice shocked me more than what they said. I couldn’t ever remember hearing one speak before. The six made their way to their cycles and pulled the inner tubes from the tyres. When I realised that all the caravan’s cyclists had filled their inner tubes with water, I was staggered by the lack of confidence they’d displayed towards my person. They’d brought provisions that I hadn’t authorised for a caravan under my command, as if they could foresee that I’d fail to take the precautions necessary. I was grateful and furious and twice as furious because I was grateful, and three times over because I couldn’t refuse the water that had poured through my incompetent fingers and miraculously appeared in their inner tubes. The guards gathered around the cyclists, excitedly waving their canteens. A queue formed and, humbled, I joined it. I couldn’t resist the water’s appeal and took a few hefty swallows but my mind found the taste the bitterest of my career, almost poisonous. We hurriedly set off since we’d wasted precious time filling canteens.
In truth the water situation was still dire because one sip every half hour wasn’t enough to replace the amount we lost through perspiration. We passed next to fumaroles, were constantly assailed by salt-laden gusts, our tongues swelled up and cracked. We tried tying belts around our jaws to keep our mouths shut but our lips opened unintentionally from our heavy breathing; we just couldn’t keep our jaw muscles under control. That salty wind would shoot up the pores of our skin and rob us of moisture that we hadn’t perspired yet. It brought thirst, torturing thirst. The thought of tearing at my own thigh and drinking my blood invaded my mind. As our moisture levels dropped, our strength ebbed as well, so I was forced to call a long halt to allow our bodies to replenish our juices as we rested. We huddled in the shadow of the wagons and we administered water on our tongues, drop by drop. With each tiny sip, our minds screamed for more as insanity beckoned. From fear that dry food would increase our thirst I forbade the distribution of any food apart from raisins. As usual, the cyclists ignored me. They squatted in the sun and hungrily ate their salt fish. Then they took off their blouses, filled them with sand and peed into them. The urine was filtered by the sand and the fabric and ran out into their cups. They repeated this several times before deciding that it was clear enough to drink.
The guards watched them, smacking their parched lips. They asked me if they’d be allowed to do the same. I forbade them to drink their urine. Batourim maintained that urine purifies when filtered several times through linen and sand. I hit him to shut him up. He looked at me with hate.
“We’ll die, Captain, the desert will desiccate us. The cyclists are wise, we’re the fools.”
I stood up and kicked him so that he collapsed, moaning. I menacingly asked if there was anyone else wanting to drink his own urine. I’d already been humiliated enough, I wasn’t about to allow any of my guards to ape the cyclists’ antics.
Batourim dragged himself up and screamed at me, “It was really stupid to put all our water in one berlinga; you should’ve split the quantity among many since an accident was bound to happen. You think you know it all but you know nothing.”
Enraged, I charged at him and hit him with such fury that he lost consciousness. I spat out the bilious foam that clogged my mouth. This explains why there’d been no loading plan – the bastard! – he’d done it on purpose, he’d wanted me to make an utter fool of myself! How the hell was I to think how the water should be distributed in no time flat? What an idiot I was! How did I manage to slip on every banana skin that that depraved youth laid in my
path? Which guard would put his trust in me after this fiasco?
The foam clogged my mouth and throat again as if I had rabies. I cursed everyone onto their feet to restart. I ordered the unconscious Batourim to be loaded on the lightened water berlinga and started to whip the others with the butt of my pistol to drive them up to speed. I heard feverish muttering of discontent behind my back and turned. “You three, take off your boots and socks.” I forced them to walk barefoot and the scorching desert seared their soles. They danced like dervishes and their cries drove back the desert’s silence. Their example put the wind up the others, who put their backs into carrying the planks and their legs into keeping up the pace. It didn’t take long before the three dervishes fainted and joined Batourim on the water berlinga. I calculated that I could sacrifice at least six to warn or inspire the others. I wasn’t worried about injuries they’d recover from, I just hoped that we’d get back alive. The greatest danger our caravan faced was to give up, to lose heart due to the hopelessness of our expedition and, sapped of strength and beaten by thirst, to collapse in a listless heap on the sand. I kept them in a feral state so that they’d rely on instinct, and keep thinking to a minimum.
Four torturous hours later, we finally drew near the place marked on the map. I’d calculated that it must lie just behind the next sand dune. I sent a scouting party out to make sure that we weren’t walking into a Mameluke ambush. Meanwhile, I clambered onto a berlinga and scanned the surrounding desert with field glasses. The desert was strangely quiescent, we hadn’t caught sight of a single Mameluke’s robe. The size of our caravan was too large not to have attracted some attention. It made me think that the Consortium had taken the precaution of clearing them away before sending their salt in this direction. It wasn’t long before the scouting party returned, their officer looking totally bemused.
“Captain Drake, you won’t believe me, but behind yonder sand dune, it’s snowing!”
What Lot's Wife Saw Page 26